


Sacrament

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [23]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blasphemy, Cannibalism, Claiming, Cum Play, Drunkenness, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Marriage, Possession, Roadtrip, adoration, odalisque verse, rough oral, vignettes of sex and violence verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:43:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4104688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Hannibal,” he tries again, waits for the frown, for the grunt of displeasure. “Do you remember getting married?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hannibal presses his tongue between his lips in a desperate attempt to wet them, his throat still cloying as he murmurs, “I would never.”</i>
</p><p>The Wolves get hitched! Wait, what?!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a wonderfully debauched and fun commission for the incredible [hstaiger](http://hstaiger.tumblr.com/) and lovely [zerosgirl02](http://zerosgirl02.tumblr.com/)! Thank you guys so much for your support and love, we had the time of our lives writing this one!

Will wakes only when the sun decides to vindictively slit his eyelids with entirely unwelcome rays of light. It is early afternoon from what he can tell, and it takes him a moment to realize that he is not actually home. Firstly, the sun is not Greek sun. It is dirtier, sharper, like someone flashing a torch through an unwashed window. This is city sun, and Will's heart jolts for a moment of panic as he wonders how the hell he ended up in the city and what city he ended up in.

He turns his head, blind, still, against the sun, and seeks beside himself for the familiar weight of Hannibal. That, at least, is there. Whatever city they are in, they are in it together. Now Will just has to figure out what he took and what he drank that has his entire being swaying in pain. It's been a long time since he has been so hammered, a long time since Hannibal has allowed him to do it.

Longer still since Hannibal had joined him – voluntarily or not – in the same inebriation.

Hannibal is out cold. Will finally forces his eyes open and snorts at the sight. Hannibal is in a cassock. A full, heavy, genuine black cassock that covers him from the white collar around his neck to partially bared pale thigh. Will buries his face in the pillow to stifle his giggling but the snorting grows louder until he almost chokes on it and just turns on his back with a loud curse, pressing a hand over his eyes as he continues to laugh.

“Will.”

The voice is undeniably Hannibal's and yet so far from him that Will's laughter grows more convulsive. The word is thick, scraped from sore throat and dry mouth, sticky with whatever they had the night before, and dragged out in a way Hannibal would never consciously allow himself to slur. The warning is clear, but the threat behind it is lacking. All bark and no bite.

Will slides his hand down to his mouth to try and contain himself. The sound is muffled, at least, but beneath him the cheap bed shakes on creaky springs, and Hannibal hums a long, foreboding note. Will hardly notices it. His attention is suddenly pulled away from the cool metal band pressed against his lips.

He lifts his hand and squints through blurred vision at the ring on his finger.

It seems to be silver, but might be gold. It's hard to tell through the blood covering his palm, flaking brown from pale skin.

Will blinks. He blinks again, and gently setting his thumb just beneath the band, he scrapes at some of the blood on his palm. That, he certainly doesn't remember.

“What the fuck did we do last night,” he mumbles, other hand coming up to rub his eyes, smearing a bit of the still-wet blood against his nose in the process. He's sure it isn't his, he can't feel any pain or stretch of new scars, nothing that would suggest a caning or a whipping that would draw blood this way and in such amounts, too. So not his then. A brief glance over at Hannibal – already snoring softly again – suggests it isn't his either, but at closer inspection Will notices that the cassock is dark in certain patches and not in others.

“Hannibal, did we kill a fucking priest last night?”

The grunt of displeasure in response tells him nothing. Will frowns, rolling onto his stomach once more. He waits for the room to stop spinning – violently, horribly, like being on a ship in a storm – and once the vertigo has quieted, he squints closer at Hannibal's collar. The stitching is tidy, the fabric expensive – he's learned enough about that from Hannibal's insistences that Will be capable of dressing himself, his lessons reiterated with sound beatings when he chooses a cheap suit or his sweater with holes in it. At any rate, beneath his fingers, spanning down a dark sleeve, he knows it's no cheap polyester Halloween costume. He can feel the places where it's dried stiff, dark as if it's still wet.

“Hannibal,” Will says again, and this time he's met with a snarl, lips curling over sharp teeth.

“Go to sleep, miserable boy.”

With a huff, Will lets his head loll against the pillow Hannibal is nuzzling into, and after a few more moments of Hannibal's lips pressing together as though in thought, he finally settles to sleep again. Will considers that the man is utterly adorable when he is drunk, he is never loud, never not graceful, he is simply adorable. Something vague pulls at Will, reminding him of deep philosophical discussions the night before – here, in this room, he's certain – and bottles and bottles of champagne.

Expensive champagne.

He wonders which account they cleaned out to accommodate for the night.

And then he brings his hand up to his face again and considers the ring. Not cheap either, this one, and neither silver nor gold, but heavy titanium polished to a shine, and he can feel something against the inside that could be an engraving, but he doesn't bother to take it off to check. Without a word, Will stretches over Hannibal to reach for his left hand and – with some effort – yanks it free from under his sleep-heavy body.

Matching, slightly bloodier, but quite obviously a wedding band.

Will raises his eyebrows and settles back into bed.

“Hannibal,” he tries again, waits for the frown, for the grunt of displeasure. “Do you remember getting married?”

Hannibal presses his tongue between his lips in a desperate attempt to wet them, his throat still cloying as he murmurs, “I would never.”

“Never.”

“Yes,” Hannibal answers, an instinctive response, but something stops him from insisting further. The pressure against his finger, Will's hand holding his, something more. And with all the effort left in him – and there wasn't much to begin with at this point – Hannibal forces his eyes open. He regards the ring in front of him at great and somber length. His own confirmation seems to echo half-formed through the snarled sensation of thought pounding at the forefront of his skull.

_Yes, I do._

He draws a breath and holds it, longer than most humans should be able, and when he sighs, it is a low, sonorous thing.

“What did you do, Will?”

“I don't remember,” Will replies, and finds that the laughter is back, just as bright and just as unstoppable as before, only this time he presses his shuddering amusement against Hannibal's back, his shoulder, when he turns, his chest when he can. Then he settles, nuzzling against it, familiar and wide, heart still beating slow behind his ribs. “I honestly don't know.”

He regards his own ring again and turns it carefully with his thumb, around and around. It's comfortable, his size, certainly, so not a novelty buy from somewhere without forethought. Though he knows that there is nothing that Hannibal would do without forethought. He chews his lip and tries to think back. Beyond whatever they took and drank and did, back to the last time he _remembers_.

“We landed in Los Angeles,” he says after a moment. “Early flight. I know, because you booked it and made me get up at an ungodly hour to catch it.”

A hum from Hannibal, perhaps agreement, perhaps more stroppy annoyance at the fact that Will didn't immediately listen to him as he should _awful, terrible boy_. Will smiles.

“Then we hired a car,” he recalls.

_”Will, this is ridiculous.”_

“No, it's a Mustang.”

Will's grin is bright and mischievous. Hannibal had organized the tickets, of course, and accommodation, as usual, but Will had been in charge of transport, since it had been him who had insisted they take a roadtrip across America, not a train ride in style or a comfortable flight. “And we're going to drive it to Vegas.”

“It's uncouth,” Hannibal remarks, overlooking the smooth curves in cherry red, sparkling bright in the California sun. “It suits you entirely, and me not at all.”

This does little to lessen Will's delight as he ducks into the passenger side, and reaches to the console to fumble a bit. The hood drops back, inch by inch, and Hannibal hums disdain for the duration.

“Look! We can drive with the top down!”

“And fill ourselves on the insects that get caught in our teeth. I do not want it, Will.”

“We've already paid for it.”

“You've already paid for it.”

“With your money,” Will points out. “As you insist it is, always. It's perfect for a roadtrip, Hannibal, there's nothing better. What the hell would you have gotten instead?”

“Stop your swearing in it,” he answers, lips working in consternation. “A Bentley, again. An Aston Martin, were I feeling ostentatious.”

Will groans, head back against the seat, and Hannibal ignores him entirely. With grand reluctance and displeasure wrought in every movement, Hannibal brings their bags to the back seat and sets them carefully in. Balefully, he eyes Will as he returns to the driver's seat, and settles in.

“Can I –”

“Absolutely not.”

Will just snorts and settles back. He hadn't expected anything different than the answer he had gotten. The car purrs when it starts, and Will can hear, though he knows the man will refuse to admit it, that Hannibal is at least relieved that it doesn't putt or growl with an over-compensating engine.

No. Will had taken a long time to choose this car. Perfect and bright and ridiculous for them both. He had taken a lot into account when he had ordered it specifically for their time here. The large trunk, the polished finish, the wide front bumper that he knows he will be bent over inevitably by the end of the day and fucked hard against for his insolence or whatever else Hannibal chooses to blame him for that day.

It's perfect.

And he knows that Hannibal knows it.

_”I think we're in Vegas right now,” Will murmurs after a while, and, with a groan, pushes himself up to check out the window._

Hotels and neon, some already lit in anticipation for the evening, cars in endless rivers on the roads and pedestrians out in full on the sidewalks, crowding the street vendors and carrying ridiculously bright umbrellas and heavily loaded shoulder bags and cameras.

“We're in Las Vegas,” Will sighs, drawing a hand over his face, ring catching against his skin again. “Hannibal, we got married in Vegas.”

“That isn't funny, Will.”

“I'm not trying to be. Look.”

Will whips the curtains back and Hannibal seethes in Lithuanian at the light that seems to pierce directly through his orbital cavities and into his frontal lobe. It isn't Greece, not this glaring brutal sun, and not the reflections off metal and glass rather than the sea. They are in Vegas, and if Hannibal feels like being honest with himself, he's yet to find a better explanation for the band of metal around his finger than the one Will is offering.

“Close it,” pleads Hannibal, turning against the spinning of the room to bury his face in his pillow again. “Please, before you force my hand against you, headache or otherwise.”

The curtains slip closed, brass rings scraping against the rod.

“I don't think you can do that anymore,” Will considers.

“Beat you?”

“If we're married.”

“The ring will only split your lip that much faster, wretched child, do not doubt my capabilities.”

Hannibal brings the stiff cotton sheets – cheap, so cheap it all but scrapes his skin like sandpaper – over his face. In the darkness beneath, little spots of light pierce through places where the threads have become thin. It reminds Hannibal of stars, specks of sunlight cast through great black distances and visible to only himself.

And to Will.

_”I have told you three times, Will.”_

He bites his lip, grinning with a flash of too-big white teeth. “You have.”

“Your dreadful feet belong on the floor, not on the seat.”

“You don't even like this car.”

The Mustang brakes far better than Hannibal would have expected. Screeching to a halt and leaving twin tire tracks across the pavement, he pulls the car aside and shuts it off, listening to the blinking of the engine and regarding Will at great length. The boy's grin only widens, and splits into a laugh when Hannibal snatches him by the hair to drag him from the car, headlights burning twin strands of gold down the black desert highway.

They are somewhere in the desert now, slowly making their way from California into Nevada, driving while both are awake enough to want to. It is rare they sleep more than once every few days, now, with their proclivities and the fact that they are learning a new language – Swedish – together again. Will's hand grasps back and quickly catches Hannibal's wrist, used, after years of this, to finding it immediately on the first grab now.

“You know, I think,” Will giggles, gasping when his feet scrabble against the rough pavement. “I think it's illegal to pull over on a state highway.”

“It surprises me, still, that you consider me within the realms of this country's laws and the reaches of its justice.”

Will laughs more, moans when he's shoved to his knees and his head arched back at an almost painful angle. He bites his lip and watches Hannibal, adoring. It is late but not ridiculously, the gas tank is full from the last station they stopped at, not half an hour ago. Before them and around them is nothing but empty road and a sky filled with stars.

“You need to be hard if you wanna fuck me,” Will tells him, teasing and playful, with eyes already wide and pupils blown before Hannibal's hand strikes hard against his cheek. Will's moan shivers in the cooling air, disappears without an echo, the space around them too vast to carry one. Will turns into the palm that gentles over his hot skin, and kisses it. “You look really, really good driving that car,” he whispers. “I could barely keep my hands out of my pants watching you caress the wheel and draw your fingers down the gear shift.”

“Insatiable boy,” Hannibal scolds, but his voice is far more a purr than a growl. There is something wonderfully savage about this, Will's knees down on the black asphalt, his face illuminated in stark contrast by the Mustang's headlights. It looks like a murder scene, before the act in question takes place, when lesser killers would use a gun to empty their victim's brains against the dry earth.

“That's better,” says Will. His hungry gaze rests on the throbbing ridge in Hannibal's trousers, only for a moment before Hannibal jerks Will's head against his groin, and the boy's lips part on a moan against his cock.

“Suck.”

Obedient little hands lift to unfasten Hannibal's pants, not baring him but lowering them just enough to show the stiff outline of his erection against his briefs. These, too, brought down just enough to let his cock slide free, and Will's mouth feels almost scalding as he kisses Hannibal's shaft in the cold night air. The wind carries on it the scent of night-blooming desert flowers, of rain distant and brief but enough to pull petrichor from the soil. Hannibal draws a deep breath and holds it, watching rapt as pert pink lips part to take his length between them.

He lets Will dampen the head of his cock, no more than that, before he thrusts hard enough against his throat to choke him.

Will moans. Long and low and enough to open his throat to this, before his eyes fold closed and he takes everything Hannibal gives him. He does not use his hands, too used to the repercussions of trying to, and instead sets them obediently to his thighs, fingers curling and tensing when Hannibal pushes too deep and chokes him too hard. Every motion is perfect, driving Will to sharp gagging and the familiar taste of bile. His body tenses and relaxes, and when his hair is pulled hard enough that he can feel some strands come apart from his scalp, he opens his eyes to look up.

Hannibal is beautiful, powerful and insatiable and strong and entirely merciless in his treatment of his boy, and Will would have him no other way. Hours on the plane, hours more in the car, and only now, _now_ they are together this way, on the side of the road, Will's knees getting filthy with dust and tar, so hard in his pants he could scream for it.

He whimpers instead.

“Do not,” Hannibal answers, immediate and knowing. “This is your punishment, awful boy, not a reward.”

He turns his wrist just enough to pull Will's curls iron-straight and forces his head down further. His cock fills Will's mouth, his throat, rattles his breathing to unsteady little pants through his nose. Hannibal watches spit pool in the corners of the boy's lips and drip thick down his chin, and only then does he relent enough to feel Will suck down air around him. A quick jerk finds threads of dark hair left between Hannibal's fingers and Will sprawling on the ground, and without concern for standing with his cock out, hard and spit-slick, on the side of the road, Hannibal inclines his head towards the car.

“Over the hood. Pants around your ankles. Do not touch.”

Will laughs, hands splayed against the hot ground as he catches his breath, as he draws the back of his wrist against his lips to smear the spit away. He stands when his head stops spinning, and with a grin bright and wide directed at Hannibal, he moves to work the button of his pants, slowly, for Hannibal to watch.

Careful motions, not hesitant but deliberately teasing, and Will slips his jeans down to his thighs, turning to stand in profile so Hannibal can see how hard he is in his underwear – worn under specific instruction when they had left the morning before. He does not touch. He does little more than tremble in the open air before sliding his pants lower, to catch and bunch around his boots. Only then does he turn, a feline, streamlined movement to face the hood of the car.

Slowly he bends, thumbs hooked in the front of his underwear to draw the briefs down. He does not show himself to Hannibal until his ass slips free of the fabric, and even then, Will sets his palms against his ass as he bares himself for Hannibal and anyone driving down the highway to see.

The slap against his ass comes suddenly, a hard snap that draws a hiss and then a contented hum from the boy who takes it so beautifully. Hannibal rubs over the heat of the spank, dispersing scarlet over his skin, and then sets both hands to the hood of the car. He looms over the boy beneath, the tip of his cock already pushing unrelenting against Will's unprepared opening. There will be no stretching, no fingering with three or two or even just one – no, it will be a taking, of Hannibal's pleasure and Will's punishment, every bit as unforgiving as the desert around them.

“Do you find this funny?” Hannibal asks, snaring a hand around Will's jaw to pull his head up and bend his back deep. “To cost me in cleaning your filth from the seats, to disobey my clear instructions to keep your miserable feet on the floor? What I am forced to pay in money and in patience, you will pay double from your very hide.”

A sharp thrust splits Will in two, one hard push to breach and bury. Gravel skitters beneath Hannibal's shoes as he brings his body closer, legs on either side of Will's, to shove his cock into the boy's ass down to the hilt.

Will's cry doesn't echo, but it does linger. In the hot breath panted over and over against the cooling hood of the car, in the sweat beneath Will's palms, in the shuddering and tension of his entire body. It hurts. It hurts so much and Will could moan for it, but he bites it back, just for now, as Hannibal sets his teeth against his shoulder and slowly bites down. It is a pressure, not a piercing, and Will whines in pain as Hannibal lets him go.

The rhythm is quick to begin with, no slow pushes to get Will used to this, now that he has near-torn him apart for his own pleasure. It is quick and it is dirty, and Will finds himself unable to do more than push up on his toes and press closer to the hood of the car. He stretches his arms forward as though he will be saved by someone who sees him, as though it will in any way help. But it is only moments later that his back arches in pleasure not agony, that his muscles grow lax and he shivers pleasantly against the metal beneath him.

“You're always patient with me,” Will moans, smiling, seeking back with his hand for Hannibal's, finding it immediately pinned behind his back, though a moment later, Hannibal's fingers lace with his own to hold him down.

“More than I should be,” Hannibal agrees, his voice dropping to a throaty murmur. “More than you deserve.”

“Yes,” sighs Will. He stretches up again to make his legs tight enough to tremble, drawn long, and Hannibal pushes down against his hand harder, holding him pinned at the small of his back. The car shudders rhythmic beneath the force of his thrusts – Will's cock drips clear against the grill. He starts to reach for it, and Hannibal quickly snares that wrist too, to fold both his hands together behind his back.

Hannibal holds him with one hand, and sets the other to Will's ass, spreading him wide enough to earn another pained, delighted whimper. The older man leans back to watch his cock disappear inside the boy again and again, his hole bright red and stretched smooth. There are few sights in the world that Hannibal finds lovelier than this, and as he digs his cock deep again and again, he hopes for a trickle of blood, he anticipates the hiss of pain he'll hear when Will seats himself again, he comes, sudden and erratic, hips bucking bruises into the soft curves of Will's ass. Hannibal pours himself out into his boy with a single, low moan, and bends across him to nuzzle between Will's shoulders.

“I should make you wait for days,” he murmurs. “Until when I finally allow you release, it hurts as though you've been struck in the stomach. It would be fair punishment,” he adds, touching kisses down Will's knobby spine, and withdrawing himself slowly to watch his semen trickle pale from Will's hole.

Will gasps and presses his forehead to the bonnet of the car as he catches his breath. His legs feel like jelly, his entire body is tense with the need to come, and he bites his lip as he relishes the feeling of slick down his thighs. He wonders if he's bleeding. He hopes he is. He makes a purring little needy noise and turns his wrists in Hannibal's large hand.

“When have either of us been fair?” he asks, reasonable and calm, considering. He knows Hannibal will let him. This is their vacation. This is their time to unwind and relax and pretend as though their lives are just as dull and just as uneventful as anyone they meet at the corner store. They get bored of vacation quickly. But he hopes they at least make it to Vegas. Hannibal had allowed it only because Will had promised to practice counting and face hefty punishment should his losses outweigh his wins at the blackjack table.

“Let me,” he purrs, turning his head a little and watching Hannibal with hooded eyes. He blinks, almost sleepy, and smiles. “I'll clean the car up before we drive again. On my knees. As I am. If you let me.”

The temptation to force Will into whining hardness for the remaining drive, to watch him coil and splay and rut against the seatbelt, to hear his voice lilt and plead for mercy suddenly wanes. All at once, Hannibal's eyes hood and his hum shifts to a pleased purr. He wants what Will wants, and though he's certain that's exactly why Will proposed to debase himself in such a way, Hannibal can hardly resist the pull of his promise.

Strong fingers snatch the fine curls of hair at the base of Will's skull and bend his body deep. Will reaches for himself as soon as Hannibal releases his wrists, but the older man bats his little fingers away and takes Will's throbbing cock in hand instead. He jerks him off with utilitarian, cold strokes, like milking a beast of burden rather than fondling a moaning, blushing boy. Quick tugs bring Will's body to shaking, his fingers curling against the cherry-red paint. His thighs tremble, his breath pools grey again and again across the hood, but he holds back, until the moment that Hannibal leans across his back, his own semen dampening his trousers where it's slid out of Will, and he whispers:

“Now.”

With a moan, Will allows himself to break, muscle by muscle he relaxes, sinew by sinew he unfurls, until he is shuddering against the car, painting white sticky lines against the grill. The relief is palpable, he can barely hold himself up if not for Hannibal behind him making sure he doesn't sink to his knees until he must. There is a moment of intimacy, a soft kiss just behind Will's ear, and a nuzzle as though to press it into his skin, before Hannibal twists his fingers in Will's hair and steps back to drop him to the road once more.

Will looks up, presses his face against Hannibal's palm when it slips to cup his jaw, and closes his eyes when he's turned and pressed against the front of the car instead, the implication clear.

Pink tongue against silver metal, fingers curling against the grill as though to hold it still as Will licks come from the front of the car. Lap after lap, getting as much dust on his tongue as he is his own filth, Will fulfills his promise. Blue eyes flick to Hannibal and he arches, pushes up higher on his knees and bends, hands on the ground as he just works his mouth against the car, knees spread and mess slick against his thighs.

In that moment, Hannibal decided that perhaps there is some appeal to American cars after all.

_”You can't hide under there forever.”_

“I'm not hiding,” Hannibal insists in a huff from beneath the sheets. “I am trying to sleep.”

Will chews his lip in thought, watching the motionless lump on the bed that appears to now be his husband. He doesn't argue, but instead makes his way to the bathroom, taking up a cheap plastic cup to fill it with water, and finding painkillers in Hannibal's bathroom kit. He bypasses the over-the-counter stuff entirely, and instead locates the self-prescribed – under alias – brown bottle of hydrocodone, taking out one. He considers the pill, and swallows it dry, tipping out another for Hannibal before bringing out both offerings to rest beside the bed.

“Don't sleep,” Will says. “Take that.”

Something in his tone – warily patient – is enough for Hannibal to peek again from beneath the bed cover and palm the pill to his mouth, finishing the cup of water in one long pull. It's only then that he leaves the sheet down from over his face, back to the window now, and lips pursing in consternation as he surveys his sleeve.

“What am I wearing? This isn't my suit.”

Will hums, agreement and amusement both, and sits on the edge of the bed before gracelessly falling atop Hannibal until the man grunts in displeasure and attempts to move out from beneath the weight of his boy. Still his boy, always his boy, despite Will being twenty-five now.

“I didn't know you had a priest kink,” Will teases.

“I do not.”

“No?” Will nuzzles against Hannibal until the other stops trying to fight it and just lets him with a resigned sigh. “I woke up in just my underwear, next to you in a cassock. I am going to attempt to explain that with priest kink because I got nothing otherwise.”

Will purses his lips and hums softly, considering the disarray of their room – nothing out of the ordinary, just some broken furniture and blood smears on the front door – and the fact that he has an absolute blank in his mind from the highway 'til the moment of waking. He wonders, again, what he took, what they both took, and how much they drank to get here. He touches his ring – wedding ring – again, and turns to press his face against Hannibal's.

“I'm going to assume the blood is not ours?”

“Perhaps you're right.”

Will blinks. “Perhaps?”

“With respect to the vestments,” Hannibal muses, draping an arm across his eyes. “There was the church, in Scotland. A desire to commit disrepects against the God who so constantly pays them upon humanity.”

“The blood, Hannibal, we were talking about the blood,” Will grins, before snorting into a giggle when Hannibal hums mild dismay.

“Not mine,” the older man confirms. “Have you checked yourself entirely?”

It's clear what he means, and Will lifts a brow. “If all this came from there, I'd be in much worse shape right now.”

“A fair point. Someone else's then. Is there anyone else here? I usually stow them in the bathtub when traveling. It contains the mess.”

“No one,” Will says. This is a worrying thing, considering how much of it has soaked from the cassock into the sheets, the long streak of it along the door. Both of them tense, and Will props himself up higher to look towards the floor. “There's no footprints. There's not anything.”

_”A wasteland,” Hannibal sighs. “Artificial air pumped into lightless dens of clattering noise and false promise.”_

“Yes,” Will agrees, entirely too amused, entirely too happy about this fact. He has, in actuality, never been to Las Vegas. Always too young, and in that place they would have genuinely checked. It amuses him to see a city never sleep, to see so many tourists and waywards fill the streets. It is a hunting ground like no other, there is no one here who would be missed. Too many to choose from and so many clubs to prey from.

The Mirage offers a great view of most of the main drag, bright colors and endless streams of people, and the penthouse has a balcony that runs the perimeter of the building. Will draws his hands against the rough stone ledge and walks slowly, taking it all in. It is a city that he feels attuned to, it is hysterical and impulsive, it is Sodom and Gomorrah.

“It's perfect.” He turns to Hannibal with a grin and makes his way back to him to nuzzle against his chest, hands sliding down to take Hannibal's wrists gently, to slip their fingers together after and hold him that way. “For one week, we will be between the world's most expensive hotels, and not see a single penny wasted. You underestimate Vegas, Hannibal, there is enough to do here that we will find ourselves surprised, not just entertained.”

The man does not dismiss this outright, watching as their hands press together, palm to palm, before leaning low to kiss Will's hair. He hardly believes him, but doesn't doubt that Will is certainly going to find amusement here, and that in itself justifies the expense. Most trips Hannibal takes now are for Will's sake, as much if not more than his own. The wonder in his eyes at seeing new things, the childish delight in novel experiences has reinvigorated even old haunts for Hannibal.

He can deny him nothing, and these days, he rarely tries.

“It is pleasant to be in the States again,” Hannibal considers. “I've not set foot here since we left for Greece.” A glance out the wide window behind Will reveals the strange environs beyond the Strip – foreboding mountains and arid plains, rippling with heat. Hannibal's lips twitch a little wider, and he presses his mouth to Will's brow. “We could call for a boy, you know. I have read that prostitution is still legal here.”

Will groans, body shivering in pleasure, and pulls back enough to kiss Hannibal properly. They hunt, now, only when they both want to, neither keeps the other at bay or in the dark about it like they used to when this first started. Now, they choose together, they hunt together, and they fuck and enjoy together.

“The boys here would be so pretty,” Will considers. “They must make a killing with the cougars here, we would be a refreshing change.” He kisses Hannibal again and steps away, then, and draws Hannibal further into the apartment. The bed would certainly be big enough for a boy or two for them to share, the bathroom enough to take them apart and easy enough to clean. It would be a lot of fun for them both, truly, to do just that. But Will shakes his head with a smile.

“Tables first.”

“Will.”

“I promised,” Will reminds him. “I will win us twofold the cost of this trip at the blackjack table.” Will tilts his head and pouts, though the smile behind it is clear enough that Hannibal just sighs. “And then we can splurge on the best of the best that Vegas has to offer in lanky, talented, hungry little boys.”

Goosebumps prickle unbidden over Hannibal's skin at the words. Though Will satisfies him entirely near every night they're together, there is still a part of the man that delights in meeting and studying new prey, in learning them and seducing them, in feeling fragile tracheas and delicate bones crumble beneath his hands. Will meets his look, and the boy's eyes narrow in amusement at the hungry expression Hannibal knows must be painted obvious across his face.

“Very well,” Hannibal agrees, seeking out a suit from the bag he kept carefully folded into the trunk for their drive, now settled into a closet. He runs his fingers across an unfortunate crease but stifles the sigh that it elicits. “And if you lose, Will, remember –“

“You'll take it out of my hide,” Will grins, biting his lip as he hurtles himself back onto the bed to watch Hannibal dress.

And so they go. Hannibal defies the desert sun in a black suit, and a white shirt beneath, a tie of equally lightless black above it. Simple. Elegant. Not nearly so likely to draw attention as the more ostentatious – “garish”, in Will's words – suits he normally wears. Will beside him is dressed in strategically holed jeans – a step up from the shorts that Hannibal anticipated – and a thin t-shirt that hangs just so across his collarbones, and his beloved boots, unlaced, held together now with duct-tape.

Hannibal has long ago given up trying to get rid of them. Somehow, Will always brings them back.

“Choose your prey, little wolf. The pyramid, perhaps. There is a castle, too,” Hannibal murmurs to him, carefully turning to allow a band of shouting drunk college boys to pass. Hannibal watches them go, with their yard-long plastic tubes of neon-colored liquor, and hums.

“Regardless of where I go, I will find you again,” Will tells him, bringing his hand up to chew against a thumbnail before taking the next blinking green crossing to leave Hannibal on his side of the road and go on his way.

_”I remember I cleaned up at Caesar's Palace,” Will says, rolling onto his back to regard the ceiling – thankfully clear of any blood - “But I don't remember finding you again.”_

“I found you,” Hannibal tells him, rubbing his eyes, shifting to try to get this damn costume – not a costume, he knows, but denial is easier with a hangover – off of himself. “I believe.”

“Where?”

“It hardly matters.”

Will snorts. “You don't remember.”

“I simply know for a fact that no matter where you believe yourself to be hidden, I will discover you.”

Will's expression softens to a smile and he brings his hand to his lips again, feeling the warm metal of the ring there, still unfamiliar but somehow entirely welcome. He doesn't want to antagonize Hannibal over this, neither remember. Perhaps it's for the best that they don't. He wonders if Hannibal will discard the ring once he is conscious enough to do so. He wonders if he will keep his own.

“I don't remember killing,” he muses.

“I don't think we did,” Hannibal replies, and Will looks at him again, brows furrowed. Hannibal relents a little. “I don't believe we did intentionally.”

“That's a first for us.”

“It is,” Hannibal pauses, “concerning. The rings are the least of it. The blood the most. It does not smell familiar to me, except that it has stuck the next most pressing issue to my skin. This is an authentic robe. I remember the texture of it from –“

Will lifts a brow.

“Nevermind that,” Hannibal mutters. He creeps closer to Will, draping a leg and arm across him, holding him pressed to the bed, and breathing words against his neck. “Do you remember what you asked me before?”

“Before the casino?”

“Before now, this morning.”

“Did we kill a priest?”

“It appears so,” Hannibal answers with a sigh, put-upon always, but less agonized now that the pill brought to him from Will has begun its work. He tries to work forward, since working backwards isn't leading anywhere, from leaving Will at the corner with no small amount of worry –

_He could be taken. Solicited. He could win well and be held. He could lose everything and flee. He could go back to the room of another, draped around their shoulders. He could take this opportunity – back in the United States – to seek out his old life, and Hannibal would have to hunt him down anew._

He watches from the corner until he loses sight of his little wolf in his clumpy boots, disappearing into a distant crowd made diaphonous by the wavering heat from the sidewalk. Though the consideration to enact premature revenge by finding a new boy occurs immediately to him, the sun overpowers Hannibal's desire to actually do so. It sinks fiery into the dense black weave of his suit, drawing beads of sweat across his brow.

Terrible place.

Terrible boy.

Hannibal misses him painfully.

Avoiding several casino-hotels over a few very long blocks, Hannibal ducks into one more reserved than the rest, at least in advertisement. _Class_ and _elegance_ scream from stories-tall advertisements, though inside he is dismayed to find – again – winding aisles of slot machines. Pressing onward, past clattering coins and an endless patter of beeps and boops, Hannibal finds himself at a darkened bar, all slick black marble and low lights. It is no place he would share his presence with in a civilized city, but now, here, it is eminently welcoming, cool enough to chill a shiver across his skin.

Hannibal savors a rare whiskey – pleased to find it here – on the rocks, and makes passing conversation with the bartender. A charming young man, dressed smartly, with long lashes and blonde hair and freckles along the bridge of his nose. They flirt, reserved and knowing nothing will come of it. For all Hannibal knows, it's the boy's job to do so, and in truth, the man expects little less and nothing more.

In truth, he thinks of Will, through the first whiskey and the second, through the first bar and the one after, onward and onward until the sun sets and the Strip grows more lively just as quickly as it grows cold.

More and more people, more and more drinks as Hannibal moves his way down the long famous main street of Las Vegas. There are men, many, shuffling flyers to his hands, trying to sell him girls, very pretty, very young, a few selling boys, just the same, enough that in his happily buzzed state, Hannibal can feel his body respond to just the thought of them.

And then he thinks of Will again, and he aches.

He loses count of the drinks by the time he genuinely walks into someone and that someone wraps warm arms around him and Hannibal wonders how drunk he truly is that he wraps his arms around them as well.

“I won,” Will purrs against him, slurred and giggling. “Sixty-seven grand.”

Without a word, he kisses Hannibal, hands sweaty and slicking back his hair, lips soft and tasting of tequila and gin and lemons and soda. But no one else. Will's mouth tastes just of Will and Hannibal moans kissing him as Will laughs and holds him closer.

“I missed you,” Will grins, nuzzling against him, stumbling and snorting his laughter at the misstep that sends them both into a wall of the nearest casino. They are far, far down the strip now, down towards the older casinos and the beginnings of the suburbs. Will hums when Hannibal pushes him against the wall and presses hot lips to his throat, sucks against his pulse. A hand seeks down to the front pocket of his pants and Will squirms when Hannibal tries to reach for his hand to stop him.

He isn't touching, isn't teasing, he is hard enough already with the man just near him, breathing him in again. No, Will's hand seeks the small bag of little pills he had bartered off of a trembling kid for sixteen cigarettes. He reaches to set one to his tongue and feed it to Hannibal when the other blindly kisses him again.

Someday Hannibal will learn not to trust Will's tongue when he's like this, but with just enough liquor in him to addle his senses, and enough Will against him to dizzy what reason is left, Hannibal swallows the pill and hoists Will up by his thighs to hold him pinned to the wall. Someone cheers, laughing, and Hannibal pays them no mind, not when Will's pulse tastes like molten metal beneath his tongue, not when his skin yields so tender beneath his teeth. Just a little harder, and he could pierce it, and drink Will whole. He would, right here, if he thought he could bring Will back from it.

“Breathe,” Will sighs, moaning against his ear. He pulls his legs tight over Hannibal's hips and arches away from him, shoulders to the wall, bright eyes flashing black with pupil rather than blue when he meets Hannibal's gaze. “You're gonna tear me apart.”

“And swallow you whole,” Hannibal promises, easing into a slower kiss, rocking Will back against the building.

The seemingly ceaseless crowds move around them, just another debauchery in a city that has survived on sin, there are comments and though distantly Hannibal tells himself to note their faces and repay their rudeness, he does not. All at once, Will's warmth tastes golden, the blinking lights of the strip rise like the string sections of an orchestra, the victories and defeats of the city at large fill his eyes even when he closes them, and sighs against Will's mouth. It is beautiful. Will is beautiful.

“I missed you,” Hannibal whispers, the ache in his voice made more painful still for the sudden effects of the ecstasy in his system. “It hurts to be without you, for even a moment, Will, I flirted and it meant nothing because you were not there beside me. Did you say sixty-seven thousand?”

Will hums, pleased, almost preening where he's held, and bites his lip before he nods, brows up and smile widening as Hannibal sighs and sinks against him. He had gotten very lucky at the table. Several men using him as a lucky charm for a cut of their winnings, before Will had moved on to a table of his own and cleaned up. He had practiced counting when he had been too restless to sleep some nights, he had started long before the two of them had made their arrangement, had chosen each other.

Sixty-seven thousand had been enough to raise a few brows at the casino, so he had left, wandered the streets in search of his other half, flirting and giggling and playing up to any and all cat-calls he got. He had refused every offer, took only the alcohol and cigarettes, found the boy selling X in an alley.

He had not gone any specific way but where his heart pulled him, and he had walked into Hannibal while the man looked forlornly to the sky.

“We should do something,” Will whispers. “Something unforgettable. Something insane.”

Hannibal grins against Will's throat, trailing his kisses lower, to night-cool skin made flush with the quickened pulse beneath.

“You,” Hannibal decides. “I believe that you define both of those things, and that I might do you to qualify.”

His head back against the wall, Will laughs, arms looped loose over Hannibal's neck as the man kisses beneath his chin to the hollow of his throat. “I want to do something with you,” he corrects, “not just be done by you.”

“You don't?”

“After,” Will promises, nuzzling against the man's temple.

Hannibal relents, sighing, hair tousled into his face as he regards Will from close enough that his nose touches his hairless cheek. “We could see a terrible show.”

“Wilder.”

“We could kill someone who inevitably talks during a terrible show.”

“Less likely to get us arrested.”

Hannibal hums. “There are, I am told, numerous Elvises in the city.”

“Do you like Elvis?”

“No,” Hannibal muses. “Not at all. Sanitized pop derived from far more interesting sources.”

“Not that, then,” Will grins, rocking absently up against Hannibal, perched upon his hips.

Hannibal studies him, the way light spills copper and gold over his dark curls of hair, glistening like polished wood. His skin reflects scarlet, blue, green, all in turns from the lights around them. He is light in Hannibal's arms and all at once a welcome weight, larger than he once was when first Hannibal snatched him all skin and bones from the street and yet still wonderfully small. Will's breath smells of juniper and citrus as he touches his lips against Hannibal's own, and Hannibal swears he hears the Delibe's Flower Duet play at the brush of their kiss.

“We could get married,” Hannibal murmurs, before his voice breaks into a single note of laughter. “They do that, here.”

Will blinks at him, pupils blown and lips parted. He looks, for a moment, genuinely surprised, genuinely startled by the words and their intent.

“Yeah,” he sighs, drawing fingers through Hannibal's hair, leaning in to kiss him again, just as soft, just as gentle. “I would really like to do that.”


	2. Chapter 2

“It was your idea,” Will laughs, spreading beneath Hannibal where he presses against him still, smearing blood against Will's bare chest. “It was entirely your idea to get hitched.”

“You gave me something.”

“I gave you X,” Will snorts. “The last time we took it together you nearly fucked me against the wall of a club and we took home a man for dinner.”

“Just as irrational then as now.”

“Slightly more in character though.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Marrying you?” Will shakes his head, brings a hand to his face and laughs behind it. Biting his lip, he shakes his head again, slower. “I don't regret it. And I won't take the blame for it.”

“Terrible boy,” Hannibal murmurs. No rancor sharpens his words, no spite hardens them from the softness that has come over him despite everything. Perhaps because of everything. He thumbs against the ring on his finger, turning it in slow circles, and then spreads his palm over Will's chest, rubbing in lazy circles as he adjusts to rest his cheek above Will's heart. “I did not mean to be.”

“Married?”

“Mmm. No reason for it, and a great deal of obligation and responsibility. But I suppose –“

“If you had to be.”

“If I must be, indefinitely, tied to someone,” Hannibal answers, with wry amusement, “then you are well-chosen.”

“As if you had a choice,” Will grins, lifting a hand to thread through Hannibal's hair, sifting through the grey and blonde and brown. At this, though, Hannibal crooks a brow.

“Moreso than you.”

Will snorts again, doesn't argue. For a while they just lie together, dozing in the comfortable warmth of their room. Then Will seems to choke on his own breath, laughter bubbling from him before he can press it back to his mouth with blood-smeared fingers, and even then it just becomes muffled.

“'Til death do us part,” is all Will manages, laughing more when Hannibal rests his chin against his collarbone and blinks at him.

“Quite.”

Will draws his knees up around Hannibal and rests both his hands against his lower back, holding him close. They are insane. They are irrational and blinded by their lust and love for the other. Never, in any life, would Will want to live without him. And despite their best efforts, now even by the legal system they cannot be separated. In truth, everything is good, too much makes sense that perhaps shouldn't, and yet, Will still frowns when Hannibal turns his face against him to scent Will with his smell again.

“I honestly don't remember killing the priest though,” he mumbles.

_”We need champagne!”_

“We have had more than enough of too many things,” Hannibal declares, with a broad sweep of his hand. “There are more important matters to attend to, William.”

Tripping alongside Hannibal's broad strides down the Strip, Will skips in front of the man and walks backward, somehow still navigating – with remarkable skill – the oncoming groups of tourists. “But I like champagne,” he says, in a little voice that brings Hannibal to a sudden stop. Their eyes meet, for a moment the world around them disappears, and in a blink, Hannibal has a hand in Will's hair and the other grazing knuckles down his cheek.

“Then we will have champagne,” he sighs, stealing a kiss, and then another, patient and put-upon and hopelessly enamored with the lithe and wily creature who breaks away from him with a grin, pointing towards a liquor store.

“There!”

“One cannot be married with champagne alone, Will, it is hardly the ceremony I –“

Will stops at the door to the liquor shop and turns suddenly towards the man trailing happily at his heels. “That you? Imagined? Hannibal, have you?”

Hannibal's silence speaks volumes, tongue parting his lips to allow words to pass that never come. “I thought perhaps in France. Just now, I thought that, little wolf, rather than – this.”

“But we're here already,” Will whispers. “We are already in Las Vegas. Don't you want to marry me?”

With a shaky sigh, Hannibal seeks out slim fingers to wrap beneath his own, dragging Will close again, even as he keeps a hand held to the door's handle.

“Desperately,” Hannibal murmurs against his hair. “Choose something expensive, as you always do, and I will tell you if it is good, as I always do. We need – you cannot get married in that, Will, it is terrible – we need rings –“

“We'll find rings,” Will replies, smiling. “You will choose something expensive, as you always do. And I will adore it, as I always do.” Will peels away from the man before he can kiss him again, and greets the cashier loudly as he walks into the shop as though he owns it, hips swaying as he saunters to the back where the wines and champagnes are kept. He does not take long. He doesn't need to. A moment later he is smearing himself over the counter, whispering something into the cashier's ear that brings a hot blush to the young man's cheeks, and then Will walks out without paying.

“Champagne,” he announces, grinning wide and letting the bottle drop to bounce heavily against his thigh. “And all the money in the world to make this wedding good enough for what you imagined we would have.”

“Will.”

“Rings,” Will tells him, kissing against the corner of Hannibal's mouth.

“Rings,” the other sighs.

_”I got them engraved,” Hannibal says, words warm against Will's skin._

“I thought I felt it there, yeah,” Will lifts his hand again and turns the ring, feels the words gently shift against his skin. He doesn't want to take it off to see what they are, he knows that whatever they are, they mean the world. Will brings his hand to his mouth to gently chew his nail again. “The rings I remember, you were very adamant the things were made immediately and to order and I think you piled enough cash on the counter that the manager was called to calm you down. But the priest –”

Hannibal hums. He draws away reluctantly, to sit up and fidget the vestments out from underneath him, off over his head, the fabric pulling rough from where blood has stuck it to his skin. With something like reverence, he turns it rightside out again and thumbs across the collar.

“I cannot help but think it was an act of celebration,” he muses. He glances back at Will as the boy tips to his side and curls around him, kissing the base of his spine with little fluttering touches, encircling his stomach with a skinny arm. Hannibal rests a hand against it and rubs lightly, the cassock still in his other hand.

“It's hard to imagine a priest would marry us,” Will counters.

“It is hard to imagine many things that have come to pass in the cruel light of day,” snorts Hannibal, smile widening as Will digs little nails into his belly.

_”You don't like Elvis,” Will insists. “You said so.”_

“I also dislike the desert, Las Vegas as a whole, and flourescent liquor,” Hannibal snorts. “That has not stopped me yet. If they have an Elvis here to marry us, we will take it, in place of a parish pastor in the fields of Provence.”

A bell clatters above the door as they enter, and a tired-eyed man raises his gaze. He has only a second to register the two, champagne and a jewelry shop bag in tow, before Will folds his arms across the counter and bites his lip, grinning.

“We're going to get married,” he declares.

“Congratulations,” the man replies, eyes drifting between the two. He has dark hair, fashioned into something like a pompadour, and looks as inured to the endless day of Las Vegas as the two across from him are numb to it. “Been engaged long?”

Will gasps, and Hannibal makes a low, foreboding noise.

“We aren't,” Will says, and Hannibal makes another sound of warning that brings Will's lips wider in his smile. “Do you guys get a lot of that here?”

“People coming to get married who aren't actually engaged?” The man shrugs, rests his cheek against his hand. “Ask me if we get any that actually are.”

Will laughs and balances on his arms against the counter, lifting his feet off the floor as he ducks his head. For a good long while he dangles before his boots hit the ground again and he pushes back from the counter with a bright smile and wide eyes. “Can you give us a sec?”

“Chapel's open till 4AM,” the man tells him, moving to rest back in his chair again. “It switches from shotgun to Catholic around two, if you –”

“Awesome.” Will grins and knocks twice on the worn wood before pushing back and snaring a hand in Hannibal's tie to pull him from the place alongside him.

“Will –”

“I don't want us to be a bad statistic,” Will tells him, turning them around the nearest corner and pressing Hannibal against the wall. “I don't want something you will feel sick over the next morning.”

“We're not Catholic,” Hannibal points out, amused, and Will grins.

“We're not engaged, either.”

“Should we be?”

“Don't you want to be?”

“Give me a straight answer, awful boy.”

Will just laughs, watching Hannibal with an adoring expression he couldn't fake even if he had the desire to try. It says enough. The silence and the posture and the softness of Will against him. It all says enough. So gently, Hannibal pushes Will back a step, another, and without a word, sinks down on one knee before his little wolf.

Hannibal fumbles, briefly, in the bag where he holds the rings. He seeks out Will's, finding his own first and tossing it back in, and then plucking the smaller of the two from its fake velvet box. His thumb presses against the engraving inside, and a strange softness comes across his expression, like a moment of respite when a cloud passes by the summer sun. He does not yet lift his eyes to Will, away from the shining band. He is almost shy.

“This was not meant for us,” Hannibal says, softly. “Our lives were meant to be short and sordid things, drifting aimless between the gutter and the stars. Covered in a film of blood and worse filth than that, we were meant to go down beneath gunfire, I think, in handcuffs, throttled by one of our prey who finally got the better of us. We were not meant to find, or survive, each other.”

He lifts his brows, and allows a faint smile, fanning wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. “Or maybe we were. Out of all the world, all the countries and all the states and out of every corner I've ever taken boys from, I found you. Just as readily, you found me, pushing the others aside to reach me first. I had never met a more awful boy than you. I imagine I never will. I think, often, of the moment I looked down at you, spread across the floor between my bruised thighs on that first night, and how you grinned at me as if we had known each other our entire lives, with no mind at all for your own blood pooling between your teeth.”

“I loved you then. I loved you before then, when I sought through so many others to find one that might be worthy enough. I think that I could never love another,” he whispers, watching Will's booted feet as they step closer.

Little fingers curl beneath his jaw, and lift Hannibal's gaze to him.

“Ask,” Will says, and Hannibal breathes a laugh. What in the world could be more right or beautiful than this? Who else could complement and delight the other so entirely?

“Little wolf, will you marry me?”

Will's eyes are too bright, his smile too wide and too warm, and his fingers too soft beneath Hannibal's chin when he lifts it higher. He finds that his throat is stuck tight when he tries to reply, when he tries to breathe, when he tries to do anything but smile at the man before him, the man he loves, who will create and destroy him simultaneously with every day they share together, every month and year and decade and lifetime.

So he doesn't say anything, he just sinks to his knees as well, toes pressed into the pavement still warm from the blazing sun striking it all day. He sinks to his knees and he leans in and presses close, and with a whispered _yes_ against Hannibal's lips, he kisses him.

He splays his fingers when Hannibal seeks his hand, smiles into the kiss when the ring is slipped snug and perfect against his finger. He curls his fingers with Hannibal's then changes his mind and slides them from his grip to frame his face instead. They kiss for long enough that people start to whistle, and Will pulls away laughing, sniffing and turning away before he does something embarrassing. He stands and offers his hand for Hannibal to take.

_”I saw you in purple hues,” Will mumbles against Hannibal's temple, eyes barely open and body lax in rest again. He is tired, he is fairly sure neither of them have slept since the plane landed, since this whole thing started. “You smelled like rain.”_

“Purple was once the color of royalty,” Hannibal notes, letting his eyes slip closed as Will's mouth moves against him. His brows lift a little. “Was it not raining?”

“I don't think so.”

Hannibal makes a contented sound, and nuzzles nearer to Will's throat. “I thought I heard the sound of it, heavy over our words.”

“A storm?”

“Gentler than that,” says Hannibal. “It was soothing.”

“Maybe I smelled your thoughts on you,” Will grins. “How did I smell?”

“Like chocolate, defying the radiant starshine emanating near-blinding from you every time you smiled. That, I remember.” A pause, and his smile tips a little wider. “Perhaps I was hungry.”

Will huffs a laugh and curls his hand more in Hannibal's hair, holding him close. He loves him. He loves him so much. “When are you ever not?”

_”We don't often get gentlemen looking to marry.” The priest is young, older than Will but by barely a year, if that at all, and Will watches with endless amusement the way Hannibal's eyes eat him alive. “It will certainly be an event to put on the calendar.”_

“It is an inevitability that has been too long delayed,” Hannibal replies, and Will leans over the counter again, as he had before, only this time with far more intent that merely to hold himself up.

“We wanted to do this properly,” Will adds. “An event, as you said, to put on the calendar.”

The young man laughs, a nervous and gentle thing, and Will bites his lip just to watch him blush before he looks away and shuffles through some papers.

“Well, we have a variety of services available, we cater to any and all tastes –”

“Biblical,” Will interrupts gently. “This is a start of a new world for us, a new journey. Our own blissful Garden of Eden.”

“Well.” A sigh, and the priest swallows, looking between them. Will melts against Hannibal when the man steps up behind him and rests a hand against his back. The young man blushes darker and turns away. “Perhaps that is something we can do... you will need a witness –”

The word pulls Hannibal's back a little straighter. “For what?”

“For the ceremony,” the priest answers, his laugh small but genuine. Hannibal's lips part as if in sympathy, envisioning how the young man's lips would part beneath his own, resistant first, and then yielding. Given over entirely to sins he has only imagined in the dark, pagan hours of the night, all alone but knowing God still watches him. And now with Will at the priest's back whispering assurances into his ear, as Hannibal becomes temptation incarnate and guides the young man back to the bed, slipping a hand beneath his vestments to feel how achingly hard he's become, in spite of faith and fear and –

“You're standing on my toe,” he murmurs to Will, as the boy lifts his gaze upward.

“I know that,” answers Will, arching a brow meaningfully as he shifts his weight backward, digging his heel into Hannibal's toes, and pinning the man's twitching cock against his ass.

“Where can we find a witness?” Hannibal smiles, resting his hand's on Will's shoulders.

“It is usually family members or friends,” the priest tells him, letting his eyes slip to Will briefly, smiling when the boy smiles back before looking away again. “But once in a while anyone who wishes to take the time to witness this blessed union is enough to sign the forms for us.”

“You will be witnessing it,” Hannibal points out.

“I will be conducting it.”

“And witnessing in the process,” Will jumps in, eyes wide and smile soft, that same little thing he had used, once, to lure boys sleeping in the cold parks of Baltimore to his bed, back when he was laying a trail of bodies to cover Hannibal's absence from the city and from his own life.

“It is unorthodox –”

“If we're going with full disclosure,” Will says, leaning a little closer, enough that the other tenses in surprise, cheeks turning warmer and warmer pink. “We are not actually Catholic, neither myself nor my beloved. Unorthodox seems to be the way we do things.” He smiles a little softer still, bites his lip. “It has brought forth seven fruitful, satisfying, magnificent years for us so far. It would mean the _world_ if such a thing could continue to define us. Would you be our witness, father?” Will licks his lips, just enough to notice, arches back harder against Hannibal's cock still jutting from between his legs in an obvious, beautiful bulge. “A trusted friend and welcome companion?”

Hannibal has, perhaps, never wanted anything so badly as he wants this. Marrying Will, of course, in the moment, because they cannot resist each other, because they could not ever find another who would understand them so entirely. But he issues a sigh at the thought of Will nuzzling affectionate against the young man, slipping a finger beneath his collar, suckling his earlobe, and then the both of them, curled together, rutting youthful and eager, not bothering to remove all their clothes let alone penetrate, but just rubbing, thighs tangled, cocks pushed together and blushing, wildly blushing –

“I suppose if we're already following the spirit of the holy law, rather than the letter, then paperwork is just a formality,” the priest says with a warm smile.

“You are exceedingly kind,” Hannibal tells him, and for once, he means it. He steps from around Will to stand beside him, filling out the paperwork that he will no doubt have to steal back to prevent their names appearing suddenly and inexplicably in the public record. Or, he considers in a moment of whimsy, he could let it stand. He could let the paperwork process as it is and have their only recent sign of life be a marriage together, in Las Vegas, after years of Hannibal being near unreachable and Will marked as _missing, presumed dead_.

The idea delights him enough that he laughs, continuing to fill out Will's information – down to his government identification numbers and place of birth – with curiously accurate detail.

Will, for his part, continues his silent seduction of the young man about to wed them, coiling and turning and presenting himself in such a way as to want to progress and have him bed them as well. Quite the celebration for their special night together. Not only a beautiful boy but a beautiful uncorrupted boy. Will wonders if Hannibal had ever taken a man of God into his collection of stolen lives and swallowed potentials.

He will gift the boy to him, he decides.

It is, after all, the least he can do.

“It must be such a rush,” Will says gently. “Seeing such happiness on such a regular basis. Knowing you are the cause of it.”

The man laughs, shakes his head, tries not to look at Will, but he had always had a hypnotic quality to him, the way he speaks and looks and turns his head. He has seduced many a stoic man to his whims before merely by being himself. _Your beautiful psychopathy_ , Hannibal had once commented.

“I hardly am,” he says. “I merely facilitate something that two people had brought together already. It is magic of their own making, I am just blessed enough to see it.”

“Love is magic, isn't it,” Will agrees, bending closer, further over the counter to almost be whispering in his ear, and the man could not look away or move away if he tried. “Unexpected and as beautiful as it is cruel. It is something to be spread and shared, otherwise it withers and dies, folds into itself and implodes, don't you agree?”

Hannibal lifts a brow, but does not raise his gaze.

The priest laughs, shaking his head, forehead creased even as his blush darkens. “In the proper context, yes – that is the purpose of marriage, to provide a – a grounding for the sacrament of –“

“Of?”

“The foundation of a family. The joining of two souls into one. Procreation,” the priest answers, and finally Hannibal tilts his eyes upward.

Will twists his lips together, a faint pout in his words. “But we can't procreate. Not with each other.”

“Well,” the young man sighs, half-laughing, exasperated and bashful all at once as Will leans so near him. “One could consider the act itself, regardless of outcome, as a creation. New energies joined and reformed –“

“You are open-minded,” Hannibal remarks, slipping the paperwork back across the desk. “A rare and admirable quality.”

Another laugh, nervous and beautiful in its breathlessness. Will knows, just one push, just one more, and he will have leeway, he will have a touch or a word or a promise. Desire is there already, exhaustion and need and want is in their favor. All he needs is a little push.

“Love is love, no matter the sexes it is between,” the man replies, choosing his words carefully, turning his eyes from Will, finally, to Hannibal, breaking the hypnosis the younger man held over him for what felt like hours. Will can see sweat beading against his forehead. “I have seen many a union fall apart when it was made for transaction, not desire.”

“And you, Father?” Hannibal asks him, leaning to rest against the counter beside his boy, turning his head to breathe against Will's hair, breathe in his smell, his warmth and the petulant desire eeking off of him like perfume. “Have you ever allowed yourself such a desire?”

The priest wags a finger at Hannibal, who watches it with feline attention, and a lazy grin.

“Some things are best left between man and God,” the young man says, with good-natured amusement.

“That isn't a no,” grins Will.

“I have sworn that I would not – a sacrifice of desire, to seek God's blessing,” the priest answers gently.

“Still not a no.” Will ducks his head against his arms with a laugh. Pushed upon onto his toes, he turns his cheek and bites his lip, watching the young man from nearly upside down. Hannibal settles his fingers in Will's hair and strokes slowly, grasping his curls in a gentle tug, just enough for the priest to see, if he chooses to watch.

He does, and his pleasant rebuffs falter just a little, the corners of his eyes softening.

Will closes his eyes, feline pleasure, and tilts his head back for Hannibal to set his fingers against his throat, then his whole hand, in a grip that isn't cruel but is entirely possessive. He hears the swallow though he does not see it. The desire is there, the urge to choose and falter.

“It is easier to seek forgiveness, than to ask permission,” Hannibal suggests, as Will bites his lip and immediately parts his lips when Hannibal draws his fingers over them next. Before them, there is a quick intake of breath, a sharp little gasp and a whimper just behind. Needy, innocent and entirely wanting. A moment more and Will opens his eyes, parts his lips more to take Hannibal's middle finger between his lips to suck, and to his genuine amusement, the priest takes their paperwork to set softly on the desk with a brief clearing of his throat.

“That,” he murmurs, “is quite true.”

_”You seduced a priest for me,” Hannibal smiles, teeth white and bared in wolfish pleasure as Will hums and takes a deep breath, lifting them both just a little off the bed as his back arches. “Cruel boy, I had never sunk to such lows on my own.”_

“I gave you the courage, then,” Will tells him, smiling when Hannibal turns his head and looks at him again. Soft, loving, and Will strokes his hair from his face and leans to kiss Hannibal's forehead. “And some seriously good sex, I don't remember a thing after the altar.”

Hannibal finds flashes of memory between the gaps. He recalls the altar, the priest spread across it and Will atop. He recalls kneeling before it himself, to worship both young men with his mouth, tugged greedily by his hair from one to the other. He recalls bending over the priest who bent over Will and whimsical thoughts of finding their own holy trinity.

“We did get married,” Hannibal murmurs. “Before all that. I remember, he asked us if we would always love and care for the other, whether ill or in good health. Whether rich or poor. And you said you would.”

More even than the depravities that followed, Hannibal is glad that he remembers this. As more and more frequently, he notices the grey in his hair. As more and more often, Will outmaneuvers him during their play together. As he finds himself, in small ways, so subtle as to be unremarkable on their own, settling. With age has come fear, persistant paranoia, that if he becomes weak – when he does, if he does not end the slow and humiliating degradation of his body sooner – that Will would leave. Why shouldn't he? Thirty-one years Hannibal's junior – twenty-five now to Hannibal's fifty-six – he has before him still a lifetime of possibility beyond this.

Hannibal considers that perhaps nothing else he's done in his life has been so selfish.

“Do you remember, little wolf?” Hannibal's throat clicks, and he breathes against Will's jaw. “Do you mean it, still?”

Will shifts beneath him, enough to slip from under Hannibal's weight and lay on his side against him instead. Forehead to forehead, Will nuzzles against Hannibal gently, not a claim but a reminder, eyes closed and breaths warm between them before Will parts his lips and with a sigh turns them against the corner of Hannibal's mouth.

“I remember you told me you would never let me go,” he whispers, “that you would care for me and guide me, teach me and protect me. That you would love me and honor me.” He smiles, heart beating quicker in his chest and hands gently seeking over Hannibal's back to pull him closer still. “I remember that the two words I promised to you were stronger than any I had ever said in my life. I do. I do remember. I do mean it. Every word, for every moment you are mine.”

Hannibal draws his knuckles down Will's cheek, and presses his palm to his boy's warm blush.

“What an unlikely story we are,” Hannibal murmurs, before tasting Will's promise beneath his kiss.

_Breathless, Hannibal pulls his cock free of the priest._

With a hooded gaze, he follows the curve of his ass, black fabric spilled over his back. He wets his lips, heart hammering in his throat, and when – with a groan – the young man pulls out of Will, Hannibal catches him before he can stumble to the ground. Will turns, his semen slicking gossamer trails down the front of the altar, and rests on his elbows.

The priest starts to draw a breath, and the sound is repentant enough that Hannibal kisses it away, and bends over him to lower him to his knees. Will watches the throb of Hannibal's cock, still hard, jerking in little motions timed to his pulse, and he drops to his knees in kind, beside the priest. Both watch Hannibal, cheeks hot with pleasure and eyes heavy. Catching their breath, kiss-flushed lips remain parted, perfectly parted, and Hannibal stands before them.

He resists the urge to ask the priest to pray a benediction, when the sight of this alone – two beautiful boys awaiting him – is enough to pull his release roping from his fist with no more than a single stroke. Spattering the priest's lips, dripping down Will's cheek, caught on clothes and hair and across their faces, Hannibal finishes so hard his own legs nearly give way.

It hardly helps when Will turns toward the priest and presses his tongue past his lips.

Messy, dirty, debauched, the man trembles beneath Will's hands and brings his own to touch almost reverently the boy before him. A worship, a seeking of forgiveness for allowing himself this. In a church, on the altar, with two men he had just moments before wed in the eyes of God.

Will takes a breath and kisses him deeper, holding his hands down just beneath the man's jaw until he whimpers, until he sinks back and lets Will crawl over him, until his gentle touches turn to a bare struggle as Will's clever fingers find his carotid and press down, waiting, just waiting, until his motions cease entirely.

The next breath Will takes like a drowning man, head arched back and lips parted wide, painted filthy with semen and spit. He rests over their victim on all fours, wolflike and beautiful, feral and dangerous. Hannibal's beautiful, perfect boy. When he turns to Hannibal, Will is smiling, and he sits heavily back against his heels and the priest's thighs before holding his hand out to Hannibal to take.

“A beautiful boy,” Hannibal murmurs, as he lowers himself to nuzzle against Will's cheek and hair, damp from the fucking he had so recently enjoyed. “A perfect talent and stolen innocence. I'm unsure I would find a wedding present to beat this one, come our first anniversary.”

Will laughs and tugs Hannibal's hair, eyes narrowed in mischief. “How should we have him?”

Tilting his head where Will wants it, back and forth, to and fro, Hannibal's lips curl in a fond snarl across his teeth and he snaps at Will's lips, grinning when the boy withdraws just enough for him to miss. “It would be bestial not to make the most of a wedding gift,” Hannibal decides. “And after he bared his mind and heart and body to us so generously, perhaps we might continue his good work, by opening him entirely.”

“Here?” Will asks, already breathless at the thought, biting his lip and releasing it, rising up on his knees and relaxing again.

“Where he might in perpetuity reflect on the nature of sin and forgiveness. Steal the film before we start,” snarls Hannibal, grinning before he sinks into Will's mouth again. “I should like to keep the video of our wedding night.”

_”Do you think we got away with it?”_

“If we have, we are exceedingly lucky. There are more closed-circuit cameras in this city than almost any other in the world,” Hannibal murmurs. “I think it would be wise if we left Las Vegas sooner, rather than later.”

Despite his mild admonition, Hannibal presses the length of his body, now bare but still blood-stained, against Will's, rocking slowly together at the same languid pace as their lips entangle. He lifts his hand, stroking Will's hair from his face, following the movement of his jaw and the line of his throat, the muscles that move along his shoulder and down his arm. He takes up little fingers in his own and touches them across his mouth, sighing.

“I suppose I must carry you over the threshold, when we return home again,” Hannibal murmurs, amused.

“You damn well better,” Will laughs, catching his fingers gently against Hannibal's lips when the other bites him softly in reprimand for the not-quite-curse. “It's unfortunate we don't have any photos of the event but we've always tended to paint memories with words rather than artwork.”

“You do,” Hannibal agrees, rocking a bit harder down against Will's stomach, working himself to a languid sort of hardness against his boy. “You paint with your words as a master does against his canvas.”

“You're drunk.”

“Hungover,” Hannibal corrects, and Will kisses him, bending from the bed to do it, stroking his hands down Hannibal's spine as he draws his knees higher up and folds his legs over Hannibal's lower back.

“And married,” he adds with a pleased sigh.

“So we are,” agrees Hannibal. The heaviness of his body prevents much resistance in thought or action, and to what end would he resist? It is not as though he struggles with his love for Will, now, as once he did. It is not as though they had not spoken of their wish to be emotionally exclusive with the other. And with the precariousness of their hobbies and livelihoods, the danger of their passion, what time is there to waste?

“I love you, terrible boy,” Hannibal says, sliding a hand down to Will's ass and squeezing firm. His cock twitches harder, filling flush on every stroke against Will's soft stomach. “But do not think this entitles you to special privileges,” he adds. His voice cracks into a low chasm of a moan against Will's collarbone when the tip of his cock catches against Will's belly button.

“Such as?”

“Such as swearing. Such as breaking any of the rules I must teach you again and again.”

“Unbelievable,” Will sighs, raising his eyes to the ceiling as though this is news to him, as though he's upset, despite how bright and wide his smile is, despite how he, too, is growing hard from the insistent rubbing against him. He moans, a soft and gentle noise, and nuzzles up against Hannibal when he presses close again.

“You know it is a crime to abuse your spouse so?” Will tells him, laughing when Hannibal bites against his neck, holding him close where he is so he can bite harder, leave a mark, one of many, one of endless. “Spousal abuse is a huge issue,” Will continues, squirming beneath Hannibal when he wraps a hand around his cock and strokes until Will is moaning with need for more. “Very serious,” he breathes.

“As though abusing underage boys is not,” snorts Hannibal, rutting against Will's bony hip. “Although in your case, an exception, perhaps. One might care less about the various sodomies and assaults levied as just punishment, when they are done to teach wretched children how to behave themselves.”

Will buries another laughing moan against Hannibal's chest, fingers curling into the thick hair across it, pulling and kneading. “And when the boy in question is twenty-five?”

“Still a child in every way,” Hannibal muses. “And still mine to have and to hold, to abuse and to punish, to devour entirely for as long as we both shall live.”

The words ring between them, both familiar and wonderfully new. For long moments, only the echo of those promises fill the air, alongside their heated breath and the susurrus of skin against skin. Hannibal watches, rapt as if it were their first time together, as Will's lips unfurl with an insatiable little whimper. As if they did not have seven years and countless continents conquered, as if they did not know the other as intimately as themselves. Will is a wonder to Hannibal. He supposes he will always be, and Hannibal – who does not believe in luck not made entirely on one's own – for a moment thanks whatever ill-humored forces crossed their paths so long ago in Baltimore, and now has woven them seamlessly together.

“Let me feel you come, little one, as you please, and then I will make breakfast for my child bride,” murmurs Hannibal against Will's mouth. He catches his boy's kiss-flushed bottom lip between his teeth, sucks it, and releases only to watch how beautifully Will's expression unfolds in constant delight from the pleasures of his own body.

It is lazy, Will turning to let Hannibal touch him as he wants, to feel his own pleasure uncoil and bend as he seeks it, selfishly, against his lover, his husband, his terrifying and beautiful other half. Will's arms wind around Hannibal's body, under his arms and up over his shoulders to hold him close, his legs uncurl from holding around Hannibal's hips. Will sets his feet flat to the bed as he arches, rocking and rubbing and stroking and hot kisses pressed to his chest and throat and cheeks.

For them, it is always like the first time. For them, it is always beautiful and satisfying and fulfilling. For them, this is their life and it is perfect.

Will comes with a shuddering sigh, a whispered promise against Hannibal's lips before he is kissed to quiet, and pulls Hannibal down against him, heavy and familiar and his.

“I love you,” Will whispers, nuzzling against him, feeling the way his hands settle over sweat-slick, still-bloody skin, up into Hannibal's hair. He grins. He can still feel Hannibal's hardness against himself but he pretends to ignore it, relishes in this selfishness and the warmth that comes from that.

“And I demand breakfast.”

“Greedy boy,” murmurs Hannibal. He snares Will's jaw with his semen-damp fingers and holds him still enough to kiss before grudgingly drawing away. “I offered it as gift, and you demand instead. Who has raised you to be so poor-mannered as this?”

He hides his own smile as he works slowly to standing, naked but for the blood stuck brown across his skin, still hard and seemingly inured to it. Skilled hands take up the vestments to fold them neatly, and Hannibal tosses them atop his luggage to presumably bring with them. A good scrub and some bleach around the collar will tidy the cassock up nicely. Perhaps they will relive their wedding night in it again.

“What are you making for me?” Will calls from the bed, still splaying his limbs every which way in adolescent pleasure.

“It does not matter,” Hannibal says, opening the refrigerator. “You will eat it regard– ”

He stops, and tilts his head. It is a far cry from how he normally stores his meat, certainly he leaves no allowances for dripping onto the linoleum floor. Nor would he have a linoleum floor, really, but that's hardly the height of his concerns at the moment. Hannibal regrets, distantly, taking the tapes from the cameras before they reached this point of the evening. From the amassed mess of bones and organs, limbs and indiscernible flesh, it appears to have been quite a celebration.

Alas.

“I think we will have steak,” Hannibal calls back. “There are some lovely flanks available for us both.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The illustrious [Hannibal Blog Awards](http://http://hannibalblogawards.tumblr.com/) are holding their nomination round right now, and if you would like to give a shoutout to [wwhiskeyandbloodd](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/) (our joint blog on tumblr) for best fanfic it would mean a lot to us - today is the last day to vote!

**Author's Note:**

> The illustrious [Hannibal Blog Awards](http://hannibalblogawards.tumblr.com/) are holding their nomination round right now, and if you would like to give a shoutout to [wwhiskeyandbloodd](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/) (our joint blog on tumblr) for best fanfic it would mean a lot to us!


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